• Location: Throughout San Joaquin County four times a year.• Started: 2011.• Objective: In 2010-11, 39,348 students in San Joaquin County had three or more unexcused abse...

» Read more

X

Truancy sweeps

• Location: Throughout San Joaquin County four times a year.

• Started: 2011.

• Objective: In 2010-11, 39,348 students in San Joaquin County had three or more unexcused absences or tardies. With county enrollment at 135,614, the absences and tardies equate to a 29 percent truancy rate.

• Mission: Teams from the San Joaquin County Office of Education, school districts and law enforcement make regular visits to the homes of some of these students, trying to get them back in school so they can continue their educations.

» Social News

It is early on a recent Monday morning, the scene a meeting room at the San Joaquin County Office of Education.

Gathered around tables are 15 school resource officers, school district police officers, probation officers, alternative education directors and school attendance workers.

They have gathered for the latest in a series of truancy sweeps. Six teams will fan out across the county to perform the most elemental of educational tasks: trying to get students who have not been showing up to school to start attending.

Visits are scheduled to the homes of 69 students from the five largest school districts in the county: Stockton, Lodi, Manteca, Tracy and Lincoln. Given sufficient manpower, the truancy teams would be visiting 300 students.

Graham, Gonzales and Frink travel in a van, with Frink behind the wheel. Fagin follows in his car. Over the next four-plus hours they will attempt to make contact with eight students in seven residences to try to get their educations back on track.

As the 42-year-old Frink drives the van west on Arch Airport Road, she and Graham, 33, share the difficult stories of some of the students they have come across through the years.

Of one boy, Graham says, "His whole family is gang-related. There are shootings at his house all the time, and he comes to school every day. Now, he doesn't do homework and he shows up late, a half an hour late, every day. But the big picture is, he's coming. That's almost a bigger deal. Let's start from there. What's motivating him to come every day, and how do you expand on that?"

Frink tells of a boy who would not remove his hat when he came to school even though the school had a rule against hats.

"Finally," she says, "he let them know, 'I haven't had a chance to shower all weekend.' "

Frink says the boy's mother was a prostitute. She was using their home for her business. This was the boy's environment when he wasn't at school.

"He just kind of sat on the floor, waited for the sun to start coming up, put on his hat and came to school," Frink says. "So (the teacher) went, 'You can sit back here on my desk today. Don't worry about it.' "

Graham says, "That's the thing, what they go through just to get (to school), I don't think it's always fully appreciated."

Frink heads west on Mathews Road, then south on Roberts Road. This is unincorporated Stockton - a lone house in a field, a loose pit bull approaching the van. Fortunately, the pit bull turns out to be friendly.

Graham has been to this house before. The student in question is a 17-year-old girl. The mother works long hours and speaks only Spanish. The house's location in the boondocks makes transportation to school an issue. And the girl is pregnant.

The truancy team has been considering independent study as an option that would make it easier for the girl to pursue her diploma. She would only have to get to school two times a week.

At first, the visit seems a waste because no one is home. But as it turns out, there is good news. A phone call to the alternative school in which the girl is enrolled reveals she went to class today. So the team gets back on the road for the remaining six stops, all in Tracy.

The family at the next stop is living in fear. Around Thanksgiving, the grandfather was shot twice in the leg. The family moved and the father did not pass on his new address to the school his 15-year-old son attends. A Tracy Unified worker tracked the family down. The father is afraid to send his boy to school. Gangs may be a factor.

Frink and Graham try to calm the father, dressed in a gray hoodie, baggie blue shorts and sandals.

They give the boy the phone number of a staffer at his school. They tell the boy he can get a ride to school from the staffer if that would help.

"Hopefully we gave them some tools and some resources and some trust that they can talk to us if there are issues," Graham says later.

After another stop at the home of a 17-year-old male truant who is still in bed at 9:30 a.m., it is on to perhaps the day's most heart-wrenching drop-in.

A garage behind a dilapidated house has been converted into two small apartments. One apartment is home to a man and his daughter, who turned 13 in January.

The girl is enrolled in an alternative school but has not been attending. More than once, she has run away from home for several days at a time.

Graham knocks, and after a minute or two, the man opens the door. Graham asks to see his girl.

"Wake up," he calls out. "C'mon. ... She's hard to wake up."

When the girl finally comes to the door, Frink says, "You're supposed to be at school at 11. It's 10 o'clock right now."

The man says, "It's 8:30." Frink says, "No, it's almost 10."

It's the day after clocks sprung forward an hour. News of the time change is just now reaching the man. He says he will get his daughter to school, and the truancy team moves on, hoping he will do as he promised.

For Graham and Frink, cases such as this are the most delicate. What's going on in this girl's young life that she is skipping school and frequently running away? If anything inappropriate is taking place in the home, can truancy workers or counselors win the girl's trust so she will confide in them?

"Until they're safe," Frink says, "they're not going to give up a whole lot of information because they have to go home."

Of the little girl, Frink adds, "There are a lot of things that concern us about her. She's going to be victimized if she's not already being victimized on the street. Predators look for kids who aren't connected anywhere, really. We try to at least get them connected at school."

Next up is a fruitless visit to the home of a 17-year-old boy on juvenile probation. Or at least it was his home.

An adult reports that the boy, who has not been in school for more than two weeks, ran away over the weekend and has not been seen since.

The adult is instructed to file a missing person's report with the Tracy Police Department and to notify the boy's probation officer.

The last two visits net three more teenage truants, including a brother and sister tandem, and then it's back to the county office.

Seated in the back of the van, Gonzales has quietly documented each visit electronically as the day has passed. The information she recorded will be used in the coming weeks as truancy workers check back to see if their visits made any impact. Frink is not expecting miracles. Any progress is deemed a success.

"I'd love to say that it's extremely effective and as soon as we leave the house today that the family is coming together and making a concerted effort to get the student to school," Frink says. "However, the reality is, that's not the case. There are cases where there is marked improvement. ... They'll come to school one more day a week or they'll miss only a couple of days in a month, whereas before we wouldn't see them for two or three weeks.

"Our victories are small, but we'll take them. And we'll continue to move forward with those victories."